acquisition

Conagra spun off its potato-processing business Lamb Weston in November 2016; investors received one Lamb Weston share for every three Conagra shares they held. Since the split, Conagra is down 6%, but Lamb Weston has soared 140%.


Both stocks took a step back as a result of COVID-19 lockdowns, but they are now close to their pre-pandemic levels....

What is a spinooff in stocks? Learn all about what they are, including one of our spinoff recommendations, and discover the strong value behind these investments.

A: 23andMe Holding Co., $4.64, symbol ME on Nasdaq (Shares outstanding: 451.3 million; Market cap: $2.1 billion; www.23andme.com), is a provider of consumer genetics testing. It has created the world’s largest crowd-sourced platform for genetic research; more than 80% of its customers have agreed to have their genetic profiles available on the platform.

In February 2021, VG Acquisition Corp., a special purpose acquisition company or SPAC backed by British billionaire Richard Branson’s Virgin Group, announced that it would merge with privately held 23andMe to complete the qualifying transaction for this type of acquisition.

SPACs are a specialized kind of IPO (Initial Public Offering, or new stock issue)....

We’ve often pointed out that growth by acquisition is inherently riskier than internal growth since it carries an above-average chance of unpleasant surprises. That’s because a buyer of something rarely knows as much about it as the seller.

Still, some companies handle acquisitions better than others, and successfully integrating those purchases can spur strong growth and share-price gains for their investors.

AltaGas took on a lot of risk with a huge acquisition in July 2018....

YELP INC., $38.23, symbol YELP on New York, lets people rate and review local businesses such as restaurants, retail stores and service providers. They do that by detailing their experiences for other patrons and assigning a business a rating of up to five stars....

AMAZON.COM INC., $143.55, symbol AMZN on Nasdaq, is a buy. The company is one of the world’s largest online retailers. It’s also the third-largest digital ad provider in the U.S. Through its Amazon Web Services (AWS), the company is also one of the world’s largest cloud infrastructure service providers.

Amazon is now buying Roomba maker iRobot Corp....

CAE INC., $27.56, Toronto symbol CAE, remains a buy for long-term gains.

The company is a leading maker of flight simulators for commercial and military aircraft. It also operates pilot-training schools in over 35 countries and makes mannequins and other medical-simulators for training health professionals.

CAE reported lower-than-expected revenue and earnings for its latest quarter....

Regardless of the economy, consumer products stocks profit from continual customer demand. Learn more and find one of our recommendations here.

GREAT-WEST LIFECO INC. $32 (www.greatwestlifeco.com) is a hold. The insurer recently completed its $4.45 billion acquisition of the full-service retirement services unit of Prudential Financial (New York symbol PRU)....

Shares of Royal Bank have declined lately, mainly due to fears that rising interest rates will slow demand for new loans and lead to higher writeoffs. However, the implementation of mortgage stress tests in the past few years should keep any losses low. The bank also continues to expand its profitable wealth management operations.


ROYAL BANK OF CANADA $126 is a buy. The bank (Toronto symbol RY; Conservative Growth and Income Portfolios, Finance sector; Shares outstanding: 1.4 billion; Market cap: $176.4 billion; Price-to-sales ratio: 3.9; Dividend yield: 4.1%; TSINetwork Rating: Above Average; www.rbc.com) is Canada’s largest chartered bank by market cap....